One State for one People. Thou shalt not be a victim, or perpetrator, but above all, thou shalt not be a bystander. Yasher Koach!

August 13, 2014

An Open Letter to Wolf Blitzer Re: Blood Libels

Dear Wolf, My Fellow Jew,

You looked distraught in your recent CNN interview with Hamas
spokesman Osama Hamdan. You had been “very disturbed” by a video from
Al-Quds TV in which Hamdan, in Arabic (translation verified by CNN),
stated: “We all remember how the Jews used to slaughter Christians in
order to mix their blood with their holy matzot. This is not a figment
of the imagination or something taken from a film; it is a fact
acknowledged by their own books and historical evidence.”
Incredulous that your interviewee would promulgate such medieval
slander, you respectfully asked, “You believe that Jews would kill
Christians to mix their blood to bake the holy matzot on Passover? Is
that your belief, Mr. Hamdan?”

You let him sidestep the question and rant for a couple minutes about
Israeli politicians who, he said, were advocating genocide in Gaza.
After he referred to Prime Minister Netanyahu and his government as “the
new Nazis of this century,” you finally interrupted him with a
plaintive: “I understand that, and I just want you to be specific and
answer the question. Maybe I’ll remind you of what you said.” Then you
played the clip for all your CNN viewers to see it for themselves, and
you repeated your question: “So do you believe that Jews used to
slaughter Christians to use their blood to bake matzahs?”

Wolf, what is more incredible – that Hamdan, an intelligent man in
the 21st century, could believe the old medieval blood libel, or that
you, after witnessing him say it, could believe – could desperately want
to believe – that he didn’t really mean it?

After Hamdan ranted on for almost another two minutes, you looked so
dismayed when you admitted: ““I was hoping to get a flat denial from you
that you would utter such ridiculous words, that Jews would kill
Christians to use their blood to make matzah.”

Wolf, how could he deny the words that millions of viewers had seen
him utter? And would you, astute as you are, have been satisfied if he
had denied it? Would you have slept soundly that night, satisfied that
we Jews are not really hated by the people who demonize us?

Although I’m sure you are a faithful reader of Aish.com, you must have missed my last week’s article about anti-Semitism,
in which I mention that blood libels “have persisted from the Middle
Ages well into the age of computers.” You might have been edified, as
well as horrified, to learn that, as I wrote, “In 1986, Mustafa Tlass,
the Defense Minister of Syria, wrote a book called, The Matzah of Zion,
accusing Jews of ritual murder. By October, 2002, the book was enjoying
its 8th printing and was being translated into English, French, and
Italian.”

I know, Wolf, that you work hard to ferret out the truth of what’s
happening in the world. We Jews are inveterate truth-seekers. But in one
area, we, the ever-rational Jews, are, and historically have always
been, in denial: about rabidly irrational anti-Semitism.

For example: When the Nazi juggernaut was taking over all of Europe,
Jews figured out that only Jewish men were in danger, because the
Germany army could use them in their labor battalions. After all, what
use could the Germans make of women, children, and the elderly?
Therefore, many young men, at the behest of their mothers and wives,
fled eastward, leaving their families behind to the unthinkable fate
that only the Jew-hating mind could devise.

Even as late as 1944, when the vast majority of the Jews of Poland
had already been exterminated and reports of death factories were being
whispered throughout Europe, the Jews in Hungary could not bring
themselves to believe that the civilized, cultured Germans would
actually murder innocent men, women, and children. Eli Wiesel relates in
his autobiography how his family rejected the offer of their Christian
housemaid to hide them in her village. After all, even if the Germans
deported them, how bad could it be?

Naiveté has proven lethal to the Jewish People again and again.

Surely, Wolf, you are bothered by the violent, anti-Semitic
demonstrations that have broken out throughout Europe. And I’m sure you
saw the cover of this week’s Newsweek: Exodus: Why Europe’s Jews are Fleeing Once Again. Strangely, though, they’re not.

Newsweek quotes a November 2013 survey by the Fundamental
Rights Agency of the European Union: “Jews across Europe, the survey
noted, ‘face insults, discrimination and physical violence.’” The same
survey found that 29% of Europe’s Jews had considered emigrating, as
they did not feel safe. Just 29%? What are the other 71% thinking? Are
they hoping, as you do, Wolf, that the people calling “Death to the
Jews!” don’t really mean it?

Even in France, the country hardest hit by anti-Semitic violence,
including the murder of seven Jews in Toulouse in 2012, the “Exodus”
documented by Newsweek is a mere trickle:

In 2013, the year after the Toulouse attack, 3,289 left. In the first
quarter of this year 1,778 Jews emigrated. “This year I expect 5-6,000
Jews to leave,” says Cukierman [president of the Representative Council
of French Jewish Institutions].

The Jewish population of France is 480,000. The “exodus” expected
this year, even after synagogues were violently attacked, is a mere
1.25% of France’s Jews. Apparently, myopia is a “Jewish disease.”

Natan Sharansky, the head of the Jewish Agency for Israel, is not so sanguine. In a recent Jewish Chronicle article, he declared, “I believe we are seeing the beginning of the end of Jewish history in Europe.”

And Robert Wistrich, professor of European and Jewish history at the
Hebrew University and a leading expert on anti-Semitism, said in a
recent interview by The Times of Israel: “Since 2000, we are on a
very steady rising curve of explosive anti-Semitism and anything could
set it aflame in a massive way. All the elements are in place and have
been since the beginning of this century… The proposition that it will
go back to some low level is completely delusional.”
Wistrich adds portentously: “Having spoken in many parts of the
world, I can tell you that Jewish audiences are among the most resistant
of all in coming to terms with anti-Semitism – until it reaches an
explosive point. … The Jews should get out now when they can… Which
rational person who cares about their Jewish identity and what will
happen to their children, will want to continue in the same way?”

Wistrich concludes the interview by advising Jews around the world,
including the United States, to “wake up to it – not that I expect
people will.”

Wolf, I’m not trying to scare you. But as Benyamin Netanyahu
declared: “From the Holocaust we should learn that when people say they
want to kill you, believe them.” When Arabs say that Jews murder
Christians to use their blood for matzah, believe that they believe it.
I have one more question for you as one of CNN’s foremost anchors:
Since you know that the blood libel the Hamas spokesman stated is
blatantly false, why do you believe anything else he says?
Sincerely,
Sara Yoheved Rigler

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About Me

I write this blog to voice an opinion of a : non-PC, non-politically affiliated, pro meritocracy, TNSTAAFL, believer in NO man, that is sick and tired of the Arab / Muslim taqiyya campaign of lies and fabrication, who is striving for observance and Aliyah.